Andy jumped back.
“Vanessa.”
She slowly turned to see Matthew smiling at her. “Good-bye, Vanessa.” And he raised his Beretta.
“No!” Ian lunged at Matthew and Matthew shot him in the heart. Ian stared an instant at Vanessa, then slowly slid to the floor and slumped over onto his side.
Matthew looked down at Ian. “You fool.” He looked at her now. “I think he loved you more than he did me.”
He aimed the Beretta at her, smiled, and shot her.
18
KNIGHT TO B6
Back to Federal Plaza
Mike left the safe house in Bayonne a little before two in the morning, hyper, full of adrenaline from the explosion, and rage pounding through her from the murder of three of her friends.
She drove Louisa’s pool car, and the sucker was fast. There was next to no traffic at this dead-night hour and she made it back to Federal Plaza in record time, and who cared if she broke a few traffic laws along the way?
As she drove down the ramp and into the silent garage, she wondered how long the adrenaline would last before she bottomed out and keeled over. No, the rage would keep her upright and alert.
She parked the car, tossed the keys to the agent stuck on night duty—Prother was his name—and he gawked at her. She’d forgotten what a mess she was. She nearly smiled, waved him quiet. She stopped the elevator at the twenty-second floor and hit the kitchen, pulling out sodas and apples from the refrigerator. Her last meal had been too long ago and there was a long night to get through.
She found Nicholas and Gray in the conference room, papers spread out on the table, both tapping furiously on their respective keyboards. She set down the sodas and apples. Nicholas didn’t break stride. “Thanks. You okay?”
When the words wouldn’t come out, he looked up at her.
“Mike?”
“Of course. Fill me in.” She slid a Coke to Gray, opened her own.
Nicholas said, “Gray and I managed to stop the cyber-attack on the oil companies. I recognized the signature of a German hacker, but Menard told me he’d been killed a few days ago.”
“This has already gone international?”
“Yes.”
She pushed hair out of her face, jerked it back into a ponytail. How odd, even her scalp hurt. “Someone’s covering their tracks, then. You think your hacker friend was hired to do the work, then eliminated when they didn’t need him anymore? But who did it, Nicholas? He was killed in Germany and COE is here.”
Nicholas smiled at her. “Our question exactly.”
“Tell me about this hacker.”
“Gunther Ansell. His work is legendary, but he never could resist attaching a bit of flair for others to see so they could admire his architecture. He’s made a living hovering on the borders of society. But this time he trusted the wrong people. If we’re right, he was killed after he provided COE with the worm.”
Gray said, “One of the COE people must have flown over to Germany and killed him. In and out, fast.”
Nicholas added, “These people are playing for keeps, and this plot has been under way for a while, since it takes time to build software this sophisticated, able to break through firewalls and seize control of an entire system. It required a vast amount of planning and coordination. This was not easy to pull off, nor was it the work of a single person.”
“How long would it take?” Mike drank half her soda, felt the caffeine rush zing her brain.
“Weeks, even if they’re really talented. An attack of this scale? To find the funding—Gunther’s code is wildly expensive—develop the software, plan exactly where and when to gain entry? Plus time it to a bombing? It’s possible we’re looking at months of back-end work.”
Mike saw a chessboard in her mind, saw chess pieces moving slowly, one space at a time, getting into the proper position. It was hard to get her brain around all the complicated and unexpected moves COE had m
ade, all the while sticking with their penny-ante refinery explosions. “But why did they waste time killing Mr. Hodges? He did nothing, nothing. And you know Larry Reeves is most likely dead, probably buried in the rubble at Bayway.”